Jun 27, 2019

How to Open Up Your Own Aesthetics Clinic, Part 3: Promotion

Discover the last of our three-part series that touches on the biggest steps and hurdles for opening your own medical aesthetics clinic or MediSpa.

Now that you’ve created your business plan, secured financing , and locked in the right location for your aesthetics clinic , it’s time to start putting all the other business pieces in place and one of the most important aspects to building out your own successful aesthetics business is promotion. From the beginnings of your business planning to opening day and well beyond, promoting your brand is an ongoing task. Establishing strong strategies from the start is a beneficial way to make a big bang the moment you unlock those doors, start taking bookings, and begin garnering strong patient acquisition and retention rates. Here, we outline the best ways to promote and celebrate your aesthetic clinic’s opening for an impactful launch.

7 Marketing Strategies to Promote Your Aesthetic Clinic’s Opening Day

1. Get an Early Start with Planning

Promoting the launch of your own aesthetics clinic is an exciting task, but it’s one that shouldn’t be rushed. If you want to start with a bang, you need to give yourself enough time to properly plan and create a professional, branded rollout that stimulates anticipation and intrigue. Timelines to launch will understandably vary depending not only on budget and financing, but also on the time you’ll need for renovations, design and decor implementation, supply and equipment purchases and deliveries, staff hiring and training, and much more; however, an easy rule of thumb is to start working on promotion the first day your business plan is approved and financing is secured. Ideally, six months or more is recommended to develop branding, devise a promotional campaign, create assets, and plan out strategies and events as needed. An easy first step: claim your social media handles and domain name (website URL), so you can ensure you have a unique business name that’s easy to find online. You don’t need to post anything, just ensure you’ve laid claim to your name online.

2. Define Your Target Audience

Defining your ideal prospective patient can help to narrow in on what might have the most impact for marketing the launch of your new aesthetics business. While developing your business plan, you should’ve narrowed in on your ideal target market. Utilizing this focus, you can then narrow in on the marketing methods that are most effective in reaching those prospective patients. For example, Facebook is a strong contender for those marketing to females between the ages of 18 and 49 who are living in urban centers, while Instagram may be preferred for those looking to reach a more millennial crowd living in urban and suburban areas. ( More key user demographics on each social media platform may be found here. )

Likewise, depending on your target market, you might consider dabbling in some influencer marketing to hype your clinic’s opening. Employing an influencer or two whom you know connects with your defined target market and has very engaged followers may be a strategically sound step when coming closer to your grand opening. Consider booking them in for trial treatments to offer up a sort of review of your treatments and a sneak-peek into your new space. This can be a good way to build trust when you have few to no reviews to start and get people excited for the grand reveal.

3. Build a Brand Persona and Stick to It

Once you’ve defined your target market, you’ll also need to develop a brand persona that’s in line with the values and interests of your ideal prospective patients. An often overlooked step, a brand persona is essentially a fictionalized person, defined by a set of values, traits, and attitudes, that is used to better focus your marketing materials while keeping aligned with and appealing to your ideal prospective patient. In other words, your brand persona may be considered your ideal patient’s best friend, someone they trust and connect to. When developing your brand persona, consider what might be important to your target market and your business while also focusing in on the tone, voice, and aesthetic style you’ll use in your marketing, alongside a list of traits, values, and attitudes. Ensure all marketing assets moving forward are then aligned with this defined brand persona. Developing a brand guide at this stage can also help to define the visual aspects of your brand, such as logos, mottos, fonts, language, and more. You might also consider a signature brand color, which can boost brand recognition by up to 80%. By sticking to your brand persona and style guide, prospective patients develop a sense of trust in your brand. The consistency in messaging establishes authority, brand recognition, and stronger patient leads.

4. Capitalize on Intrigue

When you start to post online, don’t give away too much before the big launch. Focus in on what makes your aesthetics clinic innovative and different, but only offer a taste. Establish one or two key points about your branding that sets you apart and introduce your brand through the lens of those key points. This will help to strengthen brand awareness among prospective patients and help to better carve out your spot in a competitive industry.

Having said that, keeping patients engaged leading up to your promotion can be difficult if they have all the answers they need from the beginning. Stimulate a little intrigue by presenting your points through teaser statements or graphics that set you apart, but don’t give away the heart of your business. For example, if your aesthetics clinic is setting itself apart as a fun, colorful locale for millennials to get some aesthetic touch-ups or preventative anti-aging skin care treatments, a way to tease this might be to reveal some of the colors or details of your decor without revealing what the clinic will look like in its entirety until launch day.

The bottom line is simply to carefully plan out what you’ll be saying and showing before launch. Suspense is key to building intrigue but not giving out enough information or even leaving too long between new hints can kill anticipation and interest. Instead, plan carefully, post regularly, and keep some suspense.

5. Establish a Pre-Launch Email List

Pre-launch is the perfect time to start building out a strong email list. Before launching your website on opening day, consider creating a pre-launch page with a countdown clock and email list sign-up offering a benefit prior to launch for those who visit and provide their emails. Depending on your budget, that benefit might range from an invite to a pre-launch party the night before your grand opening or first access to treatment bookings the day before your clinic officially opens. ( The only benefit we might warn against is offering a discount. ) A strong email list will be invaluable to your marketing efforts moving forward and will help to gauge interest leading up to the official launch of your new aesthetics business. It also offers a benefit to prospective patients that shows you value those who put trust in your business—and that’s a strong exchange for starting a new patient-provider relationship.

6. Host a Pre-Launch Party or Grand Opening Event

Hosting a celebratory event can boost interest, create excitement, and promote media coverage and conversation. A pre-launch party or grand opening event can serve the big moment you’ve been counting down towards and create more buzz than simply flipping an open sign on your clinic’s front door. Three weeks prior to your event, send invitations and briefs to media outlets in your area who may want to attend the party and experience your services firsthand. This can offer a little taste of what prospective patients may experience at your clinic and can help build out further buzz past opening (just be sure to note in your brief whether media outlets can talk about your clinic prior to the day or not, to ensure no secrets are spilled).  

This is also an opportunity to invite nearby influencers who may connect with your target audience, as well as those who’ve signed up for your email list if that was promised earlier in your campaign. If your launch party is intended to be quite the soirée, consider instead having a little contest or giveaway among online followers or email subscribers for VIP tickets to your event. The main rule here is to not oversell it. Ensure you incorporate a sufficient budget for your event into your overall numbers from the beginning and don’t promise everyone on your email list cocktails and hors d’oeuvres if you’re unable to follow through.

7. Outsource to the Pros

All of these marketing efforts can be time-consuming, especially when you’re trying to balance all the other tasks of opening your own aesthetics business. Unfortunately, a time crunch could easily become the pitfall of your launch campaign. Instead of cutting corners, consider outsourcing some or all aspects of your campaign to marketing and design professionals. To start, some design aspects may be outsourced to a freelance graphic designer or branding expert who can put together a complete branding package for your new aesthetics clinic and ensure your branded assets are consistent, effective in raising brand awareness, and professional in appearance.

Alternatively, you could consider partnering with an advertising agency that offers the complete range of services you need to properly promote the opening of your aesthetics clinic. For Venus Concept customers, 2two5™ is an advertising agency built exclusively for you. Leveraging today’s top proven digital marketing tactics alongside compelling creative and artificial intelligence, 2two5™ offers an effective, all-in-one marketing solution. With advertising strategies informed by the most accurate, real-time targeting capabilities in the industry, 2two5™ has the knowledge, integrations, and ability to deliver the right ads to the right audience at the right time—which is essentially the perfect trifecta for the launch of your own aesthetics business. Always focused in on your target patient base, this advertising agency can take the weight of marketing off your shoulders and help build out anticipation for a successful launch event and continued business beyond your first day. To learn more about 2two5™’s range of services, contact an expert today using the button below.

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